According to Ofcom, silent calls are a cause of inconvenience and anxiety for thousands of people every month. Most silent calls are not generated with malicious intent but occur when call centers using automated calling systems generate more calls than their available agents can deal with. When the person called answers the telephone, there is no agent available, resulting in silence on the line.
Ofcom published its rules on silent calls in 2006 including three key requirements: abandoned call rates must be no more than 3% of all live calls made in any 24-hour period for each campaign; all abandoned calls must carry a short recorded information message identifying the source of the call; and calling line identification (CLI) must be included on all outbound calls generated by automated calling systems.
CLI allows people to dial 1471 and access the telephone number of the person or organization calling them. Ofcom investigated Barclaycard from October 1, 2006 to May 10, 2007 and found that it had made a high number of silent calls where the people receiving the calls had no method of knowing who had made them. The investigation also found that some of Barclaycard’s call centers had no procedures in place to prevent people receiving repeated abandoned calls over a short period of time.
Ed Richards, CEO of Ofcom, said: Taken as a whole this is the most serious case of persistent misuse by making silent and abandoned calls that Ofcom has ever investigated. Had we not been limited by the statutory maximum, we would have imposed a larger financial penalty to reflect this misuse.
